Media and it's ....

Some months ago there was this huge huge publicity given sometime in Feb-Mar about how rupee is bettering in terms of dollars. Then a dollar was somewhere around 43 times the value of a rupee. Hmm, and when all these articles on media were being published, the rupee held on to the growth and 1 dollar was equivalent to 40 rupees or slightly less at one time. Interesting than this was all the media hype that surrounded this rupee trend. All the IT companies in Bangalore were projected as if they would have to stop doing business around the dollar as in some amount of time (read infinite) the rupee would be better than the dollar!! he he he!! And then another morning (that horrifying morning for IT employees) there were discussions about the annual hike that happens in IT industry towards employee's salary being affected this year because of the rupee strengthening trend!! Such was the hoopla surrounding it that every single employee would fear thinking about the approaching April month. Well, came April and as feared, most of the companies which had given a raise of about 30% annually last year gave a 8%-12% hike. And some, believe me deferred it till July and there after. And the funniest was my previous employer who said something like this in a presentation, 'The dollar value is predicted to come down to 35 rupees in another couple of months' and we were not expected to get good raises and so on you know it how...(This was in May as i can remember). And the hike was post postponed to July there too. But i guess my previous employer game a descent hike in July. Kudos to them on that.

Now, it is August and i think the media hasn't noticed (neither have the employers) that the Dollar value as mentioned by the media or in the presentations hasn't gone down to rupee in any way as they've projected it would. In fact the Dollar is still climbing and it is a good 43 rupee (yesterday it was 43.75 i guess) even to this day!!

What does this all mean? Was this a very well thought out ploy to reduce hike? Is there a corporate lobby for getting the wrong impressions into the media and the public in general? Is this misleading or just one of those management 'games'? Hmm... probably most won't know... Ah! i rest here leaving it for you guys to think.....